Belton Live Shad Fishing, 16 April 2013 — 64 Fish — Belton Lake Fishing Tour Report






This morning I fished with David C. of Morgan’s Point and his father, Rich, who traveled to Texas from Florida for a few days to visit his son.

David landed this hybrid striped bass, our largest fish of the trip today, on a live shad fished over 26 feet of water.

David is an Ear, Nose, Throat doctor who recently wrapped up his residency, and Rich is a retired steel industry executive who began a second career as a respiratory therapist after finding retirement a bit too lax.


We focused on Belton today for the shot it gave us as some hybrid stripers, knowing that Stillhouse is producing good numbers of fish, but many of them have been smallish. I had netted live shad the night before as the shad netting can be a bit unpredictable given the forecast morning weather conditions we were to face.


We fished 5 areas today, and the last 4 of them produced fish, but the hybrid were just hard to come by.


We first contacted fish at Area 308 around 7:45am. As would be the case everywhere we went, the bait size and even type did not seem to matter. We put down shad ranging from 2.25 up to 5 inches, as well as glass minnows, sunfish and spot-tail shiners, and did equally well on all of them. I did have one jumbo gizzard shad about 8″ long which did not draw a strike. We picked up white bass, 1 just-legal hybrid, several blue catfish, and one channel cat here.


We moved on to Area 1000. More white bass in the 1, 2, and 3 year class size range.


We moved on to Area 369/382 and both e-anchored and drifted. More white bass, short hybrid, and more catfish.


Finally, we moved to Area 619. More white bass and more blue cats.


Each time we got hunkered down, got some chum going and got a bite started, fish would begin to stack up on the bottom. Several times we put the bait rods on one side of the boat and vertically jigged off the other with slabs and did very well, again on white bass, whenever we tried that.


For our efforts today we wound up with 64 fish boated. The action was consistent throughout the timeframe from 7:45 to around 12:30. I noted today that we saw very, very few suspended fish. Even when we hooked fish and reeled them in up off the bottom, few schoolmates followed, and those that did returned quickly to bottom. I also noted a total lack of bird activity. Even our resident blue herons were relatively inactive today.

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TALLY = 64 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS:


Start Time: 6:45a

End Time: 1:00p

Air Temp: 70F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 66F

Wind: Winds were SSE10 at trip’s start, tapering up to SSE15-16 by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were partly cloudy at 60% with otherwise hazy blue sky.








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